It’s a Tuesday morning. You take a glance at your calendar over a cup of steaming coffee and see back-to-back online demos scheduled for the day. You sigh and mentally prepare to conduct the same presentation over and over, answer different variations of the same questions, update opportunities in the CRM, and repeat the same process tomorrow.
Does this sound like how you conduct your days as a sales manager or rep? If so, there’s some work to be done—both for you and your prospect’s sake. I recently came across a great article on LinkedIn Pulse by David Buzo, Senior Social Media/Digital Content Specialist at MetLife, titled “Why Your Online Presentations are Bad.” David’s article gets right to the point:
“Due to technology…colleagues are connected and sharing information in a collaborative environment despite being potentially on the other side of the world. The downside? The quality of our online presentations needs to improve.”
David’s article offers a number of straightforward, actionable tips for improving the quality and engagement of your online demos and presentations:
- Use no more than 4 lines of text per slide
- Have visuals that help participants remember key items
- Smile, use pauses, and engage with the audience
- Captivate your audience early
All of the tips David discusses in his article are crucial for a successful online presentation; he completely covers the delivery aspect of presenting. However, even if you are adequately able to master the tips discussed, using the same content (slides, statistics, customer examples, etc.) for every presentation won’t resonate with every prospect. There is no one-size-fits-all presentation, because no prospect is exactly like another. The content you deliver in every presentation must be tweaked and customized for every prospect interaction.
You’ve likely done your homework on your prospect in order to get the opportunity to present to them; now incorporate that information into your presentation. A few things to consider when personalizing your presentations:
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Each audience member’s title, role and general responsibilities
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Industry- and role-specific pain points
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Organizational goals the prospect is trying to reach
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Product features that are relevant to specific audience members
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Industry-specific ROI data and use cases from existing customers
Personalizing each and every presentation may sound like a lot of work for sales reps (or the marketing teams they may hand it off to). But if you employ the right strategy for creating dynamic content, your sales reps will be able to pick and choose only the most relevant and helpful presentation slides and information for one specific prospect. Presentation personalization shouldn’t be a hassle for sales or marketing, and teams should be able to have more personalized conversations with prospects every time.
According to Forrester, 78% of executive buyers claim salespeople don’t have relevant examples or case studies to share with them, and 77% say salespeople don’t understand their company’s issues or where they can help. When you show the same stale presentation to every prospect without understanding where and how you can help, you’re not giving your prospects a reason to care. If you’re not tailoring your presentations to every different prospect, it may be time to evaluate your sales organization’s content personalization capabilities.
